Jordan, Comer Threaten Garland with Contempt over Special Counsel Hur Interviews
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House Republicans fired another shot Monday in their ongoing war with President Joe Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ).
Chairmen Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) of the House Committees on Judiciary and Oversight, respectively, threatened Attorney General Merrick Garland with contempt in a Monday letter.
The two subpoenaed Garland on February 27 for access to audio recordings of Special Counsel Robert Hur's interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer during Hur's investigation of Biden's mishandling of classified documents. But according to the letter, the DOJ has only supplied the committees with redacted transcripts of Hur's interview of Biden and continues to withhold the audio recordings, “which the Committees specifically prioritized” in a March 9 letter to Garland. The DOJ has not supplied either transcript or audio of the interview with Zwonitzer.
The Monday letter to Garland reiterates its demands, saying “[t]he Committees expect you to produce all responsive materials no later than 12:00 p.m. on April 8, 2024. If you fail to do so, the Committees will consider taking further action, such as the invocation of contempt of Congress proceedings.”
Jordan and Comer further accused the DOJ of misleading the committee regarding the department's stated timeline of completing its review of the transcripts:
According to news reports, several news outlets received and reviewed the transcripts of Special Counsel Hur’s interviews with President Biden before they were produced to the Committees, despite the Department’s representation that it had only completed the “interagency review” of the transcripts the morning of March 12 shortly before it produced the transcripts to the Committees. Because the Department and the White House were presumably the only two entities with copies of the transcripts before the Committees received them, we can only assume that, for political purposes, the Department and White House provided the transcripts to news outlets before the Department completed its “interagency review” process. If that is not the case, we can only assume that the Department misled the Committees about the timing of its completion of such process.
Hur submitted his report in February, and while not charging Biden, the report raised significant questions about Biden's memory. The report says, “[Biden] did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.” Biden also appeared unable to remember his time as vice president:
In his interview with our office… He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013, when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”).
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
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